Supercell's Clash Royale is out in America, and you should be playing it. It's a tense, strategic and intense game, microtransactions and all. Like any mobile game, upgrades are pretty essential to success. But this is an RTS as well, and the right amount of cunning can help you outfox even overpowered opponents. I've been playing for a little bit, and here are some tips I've picked up along the way. By no means comprehensive:

Don't Be Afraid To Wait: It can be a tense moment, looking at an open field and waiting for your opponent to attack. It's even tenser if your opponent has some units out there, smashing your towers. You might want to just rush you troops out to stem the bleeding/fill the void, but that's not always the right decision. A full, concerted attack with complimentary units is often going to be more effective, so wait for it if you can. If you're in the middle of a fight that you're winning, however, you might just want to press it.

Don't Be Afraid To Take Damage: If you take the King tower, you win. remember that. so maybe you've got one tower down, and your troops have moved on to the opponent's king tower. Meanwhile, your opponent is working on one of your outer towers. Let them! That means their troops will be far away from their King tower, and it's going to be hard to them to hit yours as quickly as you can hit theirs. So take the hit, even lose the tower. Eyes on the prize.

It's All About Elixir: Clash Royale is a kind of an RTS, and all RTS's are essentially resource based games. The resource in question here is elixir, and you should be making a lot of your decisions based on that essential concept. If you can use a 4 elixir fireball spell to do 6 elixir worth of damage to enemy troops, do it. If you're 4 elixir musketeer is just going to get trounced by that pekka backed up by archers, don't put it out. If your 5 elixir goblin hut can produce more than 5 elixir worth of goblins, put it down. Your opponent is going to have the same amount of elixir as you, and so your challenge is to use that elixir more effectively.

Know Your Cards: This one is pretty obvious, but it's the most important thing in the game. Learn your cards, and set your deck up to have plenty of sets of complimentary cards. Use ranged units to back up melee units, know which units are better against other units and which are better for damaging towers, know which units are going to be taken out quickly if dropped in the wrong spot. Once you start learning all of their strengths and weaknesses, start building a deck with a lot of complimentary pieces. Make a few and play with them.

Keep Your Eye On The Clock: At 60 seconds, elixir starts to fill twice as quickly, and things get a bit hectic. At the end of three minutes, whoever has more crowns wins. If the two players are tied, then the next crown wins. Use all of this to your advantage. Say you're both working on the King tower when you see the end of the match approaching: you might want to make a sneak attack on one of the outer towers in order to snag an extra crown before the end. There are all sorts of ways to pull out a win, and be aware of which one makes the most sense in any given moment.